Yesterday was an historic day in the U.S. House of Representatives. For more than eight hours, Democratic and Republican members of the body gave short alternating speeches for and against the motion, before impeaching Donald...more
Once, while I was monitoring a science-intensive agricultural contamination case, we asked permission for one of our expert witnesses to have the jurors peer into a dark box where they could see a petri dish with a bacteria...more
Every day, we are reminded that we live in a new age that can be called “post-truth.” We pay a lot of attention to external sources of misinformation, whether it is motivated public figures, partisan news networks or...more
There is one habit of attorneys that promotes precision in analytical thinking, but often interferes with the ability to clearly communicate with the audience. That habit is the tendency to divide points into sub-points, and...more
The arc of history has been moving, albeit in fits and starts, toward gender equality. In the business world, and a little less in the legal world, we see more female leaders at the top. But once a woman reaches that point,...more
12/6/2019
/ Bias ,
CEOs ,
Defense Strategies ,
Diversity ,
Ethics ,
Gender Equity ,
Jury Trial ,
Litigation Strategies ,
Trial Practice Guidance ,
Woman Board Members ,
Women-Owned Businesses
You’ve probably seen the claim, but is it really true that our attention spans are becoming shorter than that of a goldfish? Last year, the presentation software company called Prezi released its 2018 State of Attention...more
I remember once sitting in court early into the defense opening statement, and the attorney was busy thanking the jurors, again. Even though they had already heard the spiel from the other side, and from this attorney’s...more
You’re heading to trial and there is one last hurdle: the mandatory settlement conference that your judge is gunning for. He has signaled at every opportunity that he thinks this is a case the parties should resolve prior to...more
There’s an old expression: “You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Assuming that your goal is not to actually catch flies, but instead, to get what you want in some kind of negotiation, the expression means...more
What started with an anonymous whistleblower report regarding President Trump’s pressure on the government of Ukraine to investigate his political opponents has blossomed into a parade of witnesses testifying in a soon-to-be...more
I spoke with some defense attorneys recently who were surprised to learn of existence of third- party litigation funding groups. These financial companies who will front cash for litigation and trial expenses in hopes of...more
Since it’s Halloween, let’s consider a frightful topic. Experienced trial lawyers usually get past their stage fright early on, and even come to relish the idea of standing in front of a jury, or most any audience. But...more
10/31/2019
/ Bench Trial ,
Defense Strategies ,
Jury Trial ,
Law Students ,
Litigation Strategies ,
Professional Development ,
Stress Reduction ,
Trial Attorneys ,
Trial Practice Guidance ,
Trial Preparation ,
Work-Induced Stress ,
Young Lawyers
There’s a cartoon that shows a the philosopher, Plato, sitting on the grass of Athens with a modern-day politician (variously, it is Karl Rove or Donald Trump), with the latter character saying to Plato, “But surely you agree...more
The law allows counsel on the other side to deliver their opening statement first, so they get the early opportunity to tell you their story. But, there are two sides to every story. And, despite all you have heard, I...more
So you’re conducting the cross-examination, and the witness is fighting like a three hundred pound marlin at the end of your fishing line. And they’re not fighting by legitimately drawing distinctions or by using their own...more
On a recent series of flights, I watched “Valley of the Boom,” an unconventional but highly- entertaining miniseries focusing on all of the shenanigans that accompanied the early 1990’s Silicon Valley technology boom and...more
You probably learned it in one of your earliest writing classes: Active voice means the grammatical subject is doing the acting, and passive voice means the subject is acted upon. It is the difference between “The dog bit the...more
There is a persistent belief among many mock jurors that I have seen in certain kinds of cases. The belief is that liability attaches automatically to possession, and jurors usually express it through the lens of home...more
10/11/2019
/ Best Practices ,
Defense Strategies ,
Juror ,
Jury Instructions ,
Jury Trial ,
Litigation Strategies ,
Mock Trials ,
Negligence ,
Premises Liability ,
Trial Practice Guidance ,
Trial Preparation
God is Love - Love is Blind - Stevie Wonder is Blind -Therefore, Stevie Wonder is God -
That’s an exaggerated version of a kind of fallacious thinking that is often used in witness examination. It is a form of the...more
When you are working on boiling down your message, there will often be that indefinable “something” that makes you recognize when you have the right language. A good trial theme, for example, doesn’t just summarize the...more
Juror 1: “The next category is ‘pain and suffering.’ How are we supposed to get to get that number?”
Juror 2: “It is just whatever we want…there’s no guidance for it.“
Juror 1: “How are we supposed to do that? Put a...more
Congress and the American public have been gripped by some unknowns recently. A whistleblower in the intelligence community made a claim that the Inspector General considered both credible and urgent. But, initially at least,...more
The government often plays a background role in civil litigation. An action, decision, or product from one party might meet the government’s regulations, for example. The question that raises is “Are the regulators trusted?”...more
On one end of the spectrum, there are specific beliefs jurors might hold on an issue. More generally, then there are attitudes that cover and predict many of those different beliefs. Even more generally, there is the...more
As I’ve written before, it is never safe to trust a potential juror’s own opinion about whether they are biased or not. That is because there has never been much support in the social science for that ability to...more